If you’ve read any mindfulness books or done any meditation, you’ve probably heard about staying in the present. At first, this may seem a bit silly, and you may think, How can I be anywhere but the present? I’m here, right now. I’m here, right now, completely freaking out, because I think my mother will die, which means that in a week or two i will never see her again , ill never hear her again , ill forget her!
Right now is awful!
But that isn’t right now. That’s your twisted version of right now. It is, in fact, the past, which no longer exists, and the future, which exists only in theory. In other words, it’s the “what if,” not the “what is,” that you live in. In the “what is,” there’s no material for the Anxiety to work with. You are just a person reading a book, looking at words right now. Even thinking can be done in the present.
However, in the “what if” is the fear of what might have happened or what might happen still. Then there’s the urge to do something about that fear, to keep it from being realized. That is compulsion.
Another way of looking at this is to consider that mindfulness is about keeping your mind close to your body. Your body is sitting in a chair with this book. Your mind is there with you, reading these words. When your mind wanders off to replay a conversation you had last week or to think about an upcoming event, then your mind is nowhere near your body. In that space is where Anxiety presumes ownership of the mind. Can you think of a situation in which you often find your mind traveling to the past or the future instead of staying where you are in the present?
Accepting what’s going on right now, being truly mindful, doesn’t necessarily mean feeling at peace. You may feel anxious right now. What is may mean that right now, where you sit, as you are, you do not know when or if the thoughts, feelings, and sensations you are experiencing will ever go away.
Thoughts Are Thoughts, Not Threats The primary difference between strong people and those less functional, is not simply the content of the thoughts, but their perspective on the thoughts. If your perspective is that a particular thought is “bad” in and of itself, then that thought may become problematic. A number of factors can influence how a thought becomes “bad.” When you are in a totally relaxed state, a thought about snapping and doing something crazy may seem unworthy of attention, like junk mail. In an anxious state, that same thought may seem like a terrible indictment or warning of a nightmare to come: If this is in my head, I have to get it out! If you can imagine your thoughts as a line of train cars, people with anxiety disorders tend to keep stopping the train to make sure everyone has a ticket. Mindfulness asks that you simply observe the train as it passes.
Thoughts as Words
Another way of considering the notion that thoughts are thoughts, not threats, is to look at how you view words. When you see a word, you call it the thing that it relates to. In his excellent workbook Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, Steven Hayes (2005) describes how the mind is made up of a network of “relational frames” in which concepts are experienced internally as things they relate to. When you experience an Anxiety thought, you are also being made aware of all the things to which you relate that thought. For most thoughts, this doesn’t trouble you, but for thoughts, feelings, and sensations that you associate with your disorder, you perceive the obsession as something of greater value than it really is. It’s not just the obsession, but also all things that you associate with it.
Experiencing an unwanted thought is as if you opened this book and an actual mirror fell out onto the floor. The thoughts are presented as having intrinsic value, automatic importance, and urgent relevance to some behavioral response. Mindfulness practice suggests that you view the thought in much the same way as you look at words. They are empty vessels that are given power after the mind organizes and considers them. The
thought of being contaminated isn’t the same as being contaminated. It’s a thought of it.
Sensations Are Sensations, Not Mandates to Act
The greatest mindfulness challenge for the sufferer is to respond nonjudgmentally to physical sensations. For the health-anxiety sufferer, every pain is a sign of a serious illness and an indicator of supreme irresponsibility for allowing it to exist. For the person with sexual obsessions, every tingling sensation in the groin is viewed as proof of deviant orientation and predatory predisposition. So physical sensations trigger feelings, which trigger thoughts, and they all converge in your mind like waves crashing on the shore.
Mindfulness asks that you view physical sensations just as you see thoughts and feelings. They are experiences. Pain is pain, and we can all agree that it feels bad. But if you let it feel bad and leave it at that, you maintain clarity. Observe your urges to define them as what they could be.
Note the brain takes a lot of resources to process this information, always constructing and preparing for the terrible outcome. the more you use these concepts, the more resources it will get, and you will be more efficient with your thoughts.
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